CORRECTION: Rekha Basu’s column today on Ron Paul incorrectly identified the war that Paul voted to authorize. He voted in favor of the authorization for the use of “all necessary and appropriate force” by the military in Afghanistan. The column erred in reporting that Paul voted for the authorization of force in Iraq. The corrected column appears below.

There’s just something about Ron Paul. Even as the Republican Party establishment, the pundits and the other candidates try to ignore, marginalize or distance themselves from him, the 76-year-old Texas congressman keeps rising in popularity.

Almost all the other candidates trying to unseat President Barack Obama have had their moment to shine, only to see their star fall. But Paul has consistently shown up among the top three, and with less than two weeks until the caucuses, a poll by Public Policy Polling puts him ahead of the pack.

Paul is the most intriguing person in the race. He’s been championed by right-wing columnist Cal Thomas and cheered by Muslims in head scarves. In a year when college kids are ho-hum about the election, he consistently draws cheering fans. At a purely visceral level, even I’ve felt like standing up and cheering him at times. The only other presidential candidates to inspire that feeling in recent memory were Howard Dean and Obama.

What is the Paul mystique? For one thing, he tells some unvarnished truths with little thought to whose ox might be gored, and he does it in a plainspoken, unflappable way. When the other candidates have tried to out-Christian one another to appeal to social conservatives, Paul has insisted that government isn’t meant to mold people to fit a religious test and, “In this country you’re allowed to be atheist.” He’s railed against the idea of abolishing courts or impeaching judges because you don’t like a ruling. He says government should stay out of sanctioning marriages and leave that to churches — or at least to the states. Abortion, too, should be a state issue, he believes.

While other candidates warn about a nuclear Iran or hint at a trade war with China, the free-trader shrugs off the alarmism, as he did in last week’s Sioux City debate, prompting Michele Bachmann to declare, “I think I have never heard a more dangerous answer for American security than the one we have just heard from Ron Paul.”

Paul said the real dangerous talk is “to declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims and say all Muslims are the same. … This wild goal to have another war in the name of defense is the dangerous thing.”

His opposition to sanctions on Iran prompted a moderator to declare Paul to the left even of the Democratic president.

Part of the Paul mystique is that he matter-of-factly challenges the narratives embraced by both parties to defend wars, economic decisions and the erosion of civil liberties. Answering a well-worn myth about Muslims, he said, “They don’t come here to wage war on Americans because of our freedoms. … They want to do us harm because we’re bombing them!”

He calls the death penalty discriminatory, condemns war, secret prisons and assassinations, and told the Register’s editorial board that Americans should have been outraged when a U.S. military strike killed the American 16-year-old son of an al-Qaida leader. He said Osama bin Laden should have been tried instead of assassinated: “We gave trials to Nazi war criminals.”

While other candidates argue American “exceptionalism,” Paul says such thinking leads us to believe we must fix other countries, when we should be humble.

“Half of Americans know exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “The other half are broke.”

At times, the libertarian-minded doctor sounds like a radical left-winger, like when he told the editorial board we can’t spread democracy when we don’t have it here — because two parties write all the laws and control the debates.

Paul is not without his contradictions. For all his anti-war talk, he voted to give Bush the authority to wage war on Afghanistan. He says he favors diplomacy but would pull out of the United Nations. He argues against welfare benefits to the poor, but with a caveat about temporary aid for dependent people in transition. It seems that rather than eliminate key programs, he’d transfer them to the states.

Or maybe we all just superimpose our own beliefs onto Paul’s words.

It’s unrealistic for him to talk of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget in one year, abolishing the federal tax code and the Federal Reserve, and having no laws and regulations except those specifically authorized by the Constitution. And it’s utopian to think that the need for welfare, Social Security and Medicare will just vanish with prosperity, or that businesses won’t pollute if they understand property rights.

Some Iowans are concerned that Paul’s views are too radical to win him the nomination, so an Iowa caucus win would diminish the caucuses’ standing. And it remains to be seen whether his enthusiastic crowds turn out for him in caucuses (unlike Dean’s).

But a strong Paul showing could send a bold message. It could signal to social conservatives that the appeal of Republican philosophy remains in limited government. It could alert both parties that phony boilerplate talking points won’t cut it. And it might show conservatives and liberals they have more in common than they thought.